SSD Thread (Benchmarks, Brands, News, and Advice)

I would choose the G2 - the 160GB version. But as long as you're watching the %filled of the drive the G2 80GB is also good.

Not only is it faster than the 80GB, but gives you more breathing room (you should watch the %filled doesn't get too high above 70%).

Should have no problem getting the 2.5" 640GB WD in there, but it is slower and for your video (?) file handling needs it might be too slow. The 500GB BEVT Scorpio is faster, but if you partitioned the 640GB into two, you could dedicate the first partition (the faster partition) you make for the video files. You wouldn't want this to be much bigger than about 200GB though, to keep it as fast as possible.

Cheers!

 

Thanks again tiller! You rock!

I would love to get the G2 160GB but I think it's too pricey. In that case, do you think the G2 80GB would be a better choice than the 160GB G1?

 

If you're going to be running Win 7, waaaaaay better!

Because of TRIM, of course.

 

Ok, I'll try for the 80GB G2. Also, I might order the 1TB 2.5" HDD and try to see if I can figure a way to make it work in there with the 80GB G2 1.8". If not, I'll return it to amazon and stick with the 640GB.

 

QuadAllegory,

Sorry, jumping back and forth between four machines has made me crazy!

I suggested the 2.5" HD's for you when you'll have the 1.8" SSD's in there. Duh! FacePalm!!! whack, whack, whack.

Those won't fit of course, and for the 1TB drive, I'm pretty sure it's at least 12.5 mm tall (let alone 2.5" again) where the 1.8" drives may just be bare chips! The 1TB may even be 15mm 'thick', so even an external enclosure might be a problem with it.

I'm truly sorry, I didn't mean to lead you wrong like that.

I'm afraid you may be 'stuck' with the two Intel G1's, but that is not so bad, is it?

Cheers!

 

No prob. Well a guy that opened up the Envy 15 said he believes if you rig it a little, you could fit a 1.8" and 2.5" in there together. I assumed the 1TB wouldn't work, but I think the 640GB might.

So I could go with X18-m 80GB G2 1.8", and WD 640GB 2.5".

 

IRST 9.5.6: http://www.station-drivers.com/tele...l_rst_9.5.6.1001(www.station-drivers.com).exe

 

Wow, you would do that to a brand new notebook (surgery, I mean)?

Well, if we're talking about the WD 640GB 2.5" drive (9.5mm 'thick/tall') then I wish you good luck!

Cheers!

 

Thanks vostro1400user,

but just so others know, I believe these are still beta:

See:
http://www.station-drivers.com/

 

For the people that have both a mechanical and an SSD HD, maybe you'd like to answer this question for me:

In another thread (? can't find it now), I thought the 3.80 version of WinRAR I was using was not multi threaded so I tried the latest 3.91 and found out that while it's faster than 3.80 by about 9%, they both were around 20 MB/s 'extracting speed' for a 5.43GB 7z archive expanded to an 8.06 program folder on my VRaptor Quad Core setup. The two versions took 12 minutes and 11:15 min:sec, respectively (v3.80, v3.91).

While I asked if somebody could time a similar extract on a new i7 quad in that thread, here I'm asking if someone could time the exact same file on both a mechanical HD and an SSD - on the same system if possible, while extracting it.

I calculated the ~20MB/s times as follows: (5.43GB+8.06GB)x1024/12 minutes/60 seconds = 19.186 MB/s (for the older 3.80 version of WinRAR).

Thanks to any and all who can give me comparable info - mech vs. SSD!

Cheers!

 

Do You have link to that files or You think it doesn't mater which files I expand?

 

No, it shouldn't matter as long as it's a large zip file and contains varied files. Oh! And is occupies and is extracted to the same drive (mech or SSD).

Thanks Tomy B.!

Cheers!

 

Not sure if anybody saw this - there seems to be a new beta rapid storage driver - haven't tried it yet... I'd also need to force an install...
http://www.station-drivers.com/page/intel raid.htm

 

I'm pretty sure those are RAID drivers, good luck getting your system to boot if you force an install on a single drive. There has been speculation that those drivers might pass the TRIM command in a RAID setup but it hasn't been confirmed yet. In fact some pretty knowledgeable SSD reviewers have tested those drivers and are reporting no evidence of a TRIM event.

 

Well, oddly enough you don't have to force install
They actually install on a PM965 chipset with ICH8

Oddly enough you need two reboots for the console to work properly.

Else... not sure about performance - not sure if its worse or better than the matrix storage driver for me.

 

How hard would it be to strip the casing off of a 500GB 2.5" in order to make it squeeze into an Envy 15 with a 1.8" drive on top? Would it be kinda risky?

 

Casing?? What casing? Do you want to actually open the drive?

If you do that in a normal room, chance is you have destroyed it the moment you start it up again...

(Dust)

 

I knew that was going to have to happen in order to modify the HDD's and yes it's a crapshoot and we will not know if it will work until someone tries it and is successful. I thought about stripping the casing off of an OCZ colossus 3.5" drive so the connector would fit without the case hitting the other connector in my notebook. A pricey gamble and not worth it since a 160gb Intel is much more efficient and the extra capacity of the colossus isn't justified given the $/gb vs. performance analysis.

 

DetlevCM is right, those mechanical HDD's get one speck of dust on them and it's curtains. Think about the friction created by a speck of dust on a 5400 or 7200 rpm platter and how long that single particle would take to bring things to a screeching halt. The risk of 2 160gb Intel RAID0 SSD's is nothing compared to that.

 

Yeah, I think it's a no go. It seems like the best option so far is to just get the dual 160GB G1's in raid 0 and keep a good backup.

The only other solution I know is to get a X18-m G2 and 320GB 1.8" HDD. But that costs about the same as getting the dual G1 SSD's. And you can't find any G2 160GB and 320GB HDD's atm.

What would you go with?

 

It is being debated in another thread whether any 1.8 SSD can support TRIM.
I believe that G2 Intel drives can.

From reading this thread on and of i have got the impression that it was possible for some 1.8 G2 SSD owners that have got a Samsung controller to flash their FW to support TRIM. I believe that Lenovo offers this and there may be other pathways.

I own a TT with a PB22J-JS3 VBM19D1Q, this is a 1.8 drive. If i wanted my drive to support TRIM i believe that this FW does not support it but i could flash it to another FW and try doing it that way?

Thanks

 

2x160gb Intel SSD RAID0 or die trying....

 

Might need to wait for Sony to issue a fw update for those 1,8" OEM drives. afaik the Lenovo fw update is only for SLC drives. It might and probably will be tricky to flash those 1.8" drives because of the limited SATA BIOS options on those small form factor platforms. It could be necessary to use some type of external enclosure to flash via USB for the flasher to recognize the drive on those small form factor systems causing Samsung and the OEM's to conclude that it isn't worth it to make a specific flasher available for those systems.

 

Thanks sgilmore62.

My drive is a Dell OEM drive. I see that someone else in this thread had the same firmware as me and i think they flashed their SSD to another FW and managed to get TRIM working on their drive somehow. As you say if i want to try it i may need to flash my drive in an enclosure.

As far as i was aware there was updates for Lenovo lines that used 1.8 Microsata drives also like the x301.

 

I think Dell should be issuing a flasher for their Samsung drives shortly. I would wait for official support from Dell rather than modding the fw files of another OEM or the one from Samsung. After trying and failing anyway...

 

I would try it without the enclosure first. If Lenovo has a doable flasher I would prefer it because they give you a burnable ISO that Windows 7 can burn, you boot from the disk and bang, you are done. The Samsung flasher you have to create a bootable USB stick and depending on your system it may or may not recognize the drive. The Lenovo stuff is way better, I can't see why Samsung can't come up with something like that.

 

Thanks sgilmore62 for your help.

 

I expanded 7.62 GB .zip file which after unzipping was three .iso files 8.03 GB "big".

On my SSD it was done i 5 minutes and 7 seconds:
(7.62 GB + 8.03 GB) * 1024 / (5 minutes * 60 + 7 seconds) = 52.2 MB/s

on 7200 rpm HDD it took 7 minutes and 49 seconds:
(7.62 GB + 8.03 GB) * 1024 / (7 minutes * 60 + 49 seconds) = 34.17 MB/s

on 2.5" 5400 rpm HDD it took 15 minutes and 22 seconds:
(7.62 GB + 8.03 GB) * 1024 / (15 minutes * 60 + 22 seconds) = 17.38 MB/s

 

So, I got a Samsung PM800 drive today from Dell today. It's 256GB. I know people have always told me that SSDs are awesome and they are the best performance upgrade you can buy.

BUT THEY DIDN'T ELABORATE ON HOW FLIPPING AWESOME THEY ARE.

Firefox, get this, Firefox installed in less than a second. I hit "Next" and immediately/instantly it said it was installed.

Boot up is around 25 seconds from my guess. Shut down is far less.

I got lucky and I got TRIM (some new FW out? Check the PM800 thread).

HOLY CRAP. THINGS ARE SO FAST. YOU HAVEN'T LIVED UNTIL YOU'VE TRIED AN SSD.

~Ibrahim~

 

I will never touch Samsung SSD again, both my Samsung PM800 and OCZ summit were sold on ebay. lol

 

What are you using now ronan_zj, Indilinx or Intel? Is going from Samsung to one of those like going from HDD to Samsung? lol

 

Intel+indilinx， and Solidata SF1500 sample.

 

I was considering purchasing a 160GB G2 and selling the 256GB (and would've still made at least $50 profit), but I need my space....lol.

~Ibrahim~

 

Haha. I was beginning to wonder if I was the only one who felt like this. For the few games that I keep on it they load significantly faster than my 7200rpm drives could've done.

 

I know! People quoting 4k random reads/writes, pfft. Just use the damn drive. I'm opening and closing programs for fun. Indexing, IDK, is still on? No matter, it's like I have Google built into my computer. I downloaded a file off the internet, but forgot which folder was default. Instead of looking through Internet Options, I just searched for it. Came up MOTHERFUDING NO JOKE ABSOLUTE TRUTH instantly.

Transferred 10GB of data in about 5 minutes from my external, which sadly only runs on USB 2.0. Oh, gosh, too much fun.

~Ibrahim~

 

Tomy B.,

Thanks for this! Could I ask a huge favour? Instead of 3 ISO files, could you try zipping anything in your program directory (that amounts to around 7-8GB) and then time unzipping that?

I really appreciate the results you've provided already, but this would be really appreciated if you could do it with smaller, program (exe, ini, etc.) files.

Btw, those are significantly faster than what the VRaptor could achieve on its own - Wow!

Cheers!

 

Can I ask why? It's just curiosity!

Will test it today.

BTW: Results for 2.5" 5400 rpm HDD added, and don't forget, SSD is one with crappy Samsung controller

 

Thank you!

Btw, this just goes to show how large files (ISO's) you're testing is showing the 'best' the HD can do - there is no way a 5400 RPM 2.5" notebook HD is only a couple of minutes (4:07 actually) slower than a VRaptor.

Will be really interesting to see these results.

Also, are you using WinRAR 3.91 x64 so that the software side is the same?

Cheers!

 

really good deal on OCZ vertex 60GB at NCIX for Canada!
http://www.ncix.com/products/?sku=36022&promoid=1146
OCZ 60GB Vertex 220$ -30$ MIR = 190$CAD with free shipping!! I'm really really really temped to get one!
(in US prices this would be the same as 150$).

 

Yes, it's WinRAR 3.91 but x86 version.

6556 files, 8.13 GB uncompressed and 7.89 GB compressed:

SSD: 6 minutes and 12 seconds ==> 44 MB/s
7200 rpm HDD: 8 minutes and 19 seconds ==> 33.88 MB/s
5400 rpm HDD: 12 minutes and 20 second ==> 22.17 MB/s

 

Quick question:

Did anyone have their SSD NOT detected by Windows 7? Mine still had SuperFetch, Disk Defragment, Indexing, etc. still ON.

I know I double-posted this from the PM800 thread, but thought it would be more applicable here....

Thanks,

~Ibrahim~

 

As they should be - just because disk defrag is 'on' doesn't mean it's enabled for the SSD.

Thanks Tomy B.,

Much appreciated!

Cheers!

 

http://www.mtechlaptops.com/SSD vs HDD.htm

 

You're welcome!

If You need anything else just ask, I'll test if I have time.

 

just wondering whats peoples thoughts on stacking two hard drives in a laptop?What ones would setup a good combo?A small ssd and say 100 to 200 gig 5400rpm?Thanks

 

Tomy B.,

If you're really bored one day and you have an Adobe account (or want one anyway: its a free signup) then download the 5.43GB version of Adobe CS4 Suite Master trial.

See:
http://www.adobe.com/products/creativesuite/mastercollection/trial/


This is the 7z file I'm using, so if we want to make our results as comparable as we can this would be above and beyond what I expect.


Anyone else have access to a mechanical HD and an SSD who wants to test WinRAR's 3.91 version to see what differences a HD vs. SSD make please join in!

Thanks to all who consider this request. And double thanks to Tomy B. for his efforts already!

Cheers!

 

You should say it first time!

Downloading now!

 

Looks like some older comparation, and wrong one. SSD are faster and they finish job in much shorter time, so they do extend battery life.

I think that one SSD for OS and applications + bigger HDD for data would be very good solution if You have place for two 2.5" drives in laptop.

 

Lol...


Okay, since it seems you're willing to do this... what are the spec's of the computer you'll run this test on? The one in your sig?

Like I mentioned before I was using one of my workstations: Q9450, 8GB RAM on VRaptor (300GB model) - Oh! And Vista x64.

And you switch the SSD/HD's into the same system?

Cheers!

 

So my pricing for an Intel 160GB X25-M is $485 vs OCZ Vertex 120GB at $379. I'll be putting these drives into either HP 2530p or 5310m work laptops. I'm leaning towards the Intel drives just because I don't want the higher risk of drive failures of the indilinx controller and it's going into work machines. However, I'm concerned how the poor sequential write performance of the X25-M translates into real world. Every real world type benchmark I've seen, shows the Intel pretty much at the top. Can Intel owners comment?